a blog supplementing the Images of America book from Arcadia Publishing

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Downtown 1958

Thursday, July 28, 2016

Smith Park History

July 31, 1965, Neenah-Menasha Daily Northwestern

This article is chock full of period details about the origins of Smith Park and a time capsule of what it was like to travel the area around the park in the late 1890's. It would have been neat to see! I apologize for the resolution in the bottom left corner of the newspaper article. To help, here's the text of those two paragraphs, as best as I can decipher:

"As the two Menashans create a word picture tour of the Smith Park area in the 1890s, they begin at the corner of Naymut Street and Nicolet Blvd, then known as “The Avenue.”Opposite this corner, on the Neenah side, the permanent rings for the annual summer circus could be seen.

The tourist probably would either ride in a buggy or walk down a path that was made through the brush, growing wildly on each side of the mud road toward Lake Winnebago.Immediately, he would pass John Schubert’s hay fields extending from Naymut to Cleveland Streets.The hay was sold to the neighbors for their horses and cows.Across the Avenue were the Clovis neighborhood pastures and the farm lands of William Strocee(sp?) which included the area from Ninth Street beyond the present Park Drive to the mouth of the Fox River.

At this time, it would be difficult to see the Cleveland Street area since it was overgrown with weeds.However, the north end of the street contained the homes of Mike Groce, a carpenter and John Schreiner, an employee of the Menasha Wooden Ware."

1 comment:

My grandma lived at 345 Winnebago Ave. as a child in early 1900s. The Schmereins allowed the Winchs to pasture their cow in their field.

Rev. Clinton not only recruited for the Civil War but he was also chaplain of the 21st Wisconsin Regiment. Though an old man, he was with the regiment from 1862 to 1865 except for a couple of bouts of illness.

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Menasha was carved from the northeastern Wisconsin wilderness in the late 1840s. At the confluence of the Fox River and Lake Winnebago, the town’s early entrepreneurs and industrialists sought the promise of waterpower to fuel their mills and kick-start the engine of commerce. Taming the Fox with dams, canals, and a lock, Menasha initially made its mark with flour mills and lumber-based industry. At one time, the city was home to the largest manufacturer of wood-turned products in the world. In the late 19th century, however, the tides of change once again washed upon the city and industrial focus shifted to the paper industry. What made Menasha great were dependable waterpower, plentiful rail connections to centers of commerce in Milwaukee and Chicago, and a prolific labor force that coincided with an influx of European immigrants.